four months ol. the cub protested whether zoo keeperkeepers tried to open hish to count his teeth. swrairs iray suarez is up next r "inside story." have a great night. >> as the big republican field marches toward caucus night in iowa, the verbal exchanges between the candidates are getting tougher, sharper, more personal. the last six months have been marked by shifts, rises and falls. last night's verbal slugfest in las vegas clarify the shape of the republican field before campaigning slows in the days around christmas and new year's day. our las vegas review, it's the "inside story".

welcome to "inside story". i'm ray suarez. a commonplace of debate preps is to aye specific members of a competitive field and say sagely, well, smith needs to have a good night tonight. or this is one of the jones' last chances to shine on the debate stage. i don't know if any of that is true, but it does show that there's a hardening consensus, especially like in a big field like the republicans have this year, cable debates have been a way to get attention that needs into other aspects of the campaign. crowds you draw in iowa and new hampshire. the interview requests that come in after the debate night. fundraising, rising and falling on pundit speculation on the quality of debate performance. let's start this look at last night's debate with an important question.

were the things that the candidates said true? here's david schuster. >> reporter: it was another debate where donald trump may have connected with republican sentiments, but got his facts wrong. >> our country is out of control. people are pouring across the southern border. >> reporter: in fact, the flow of illegal immigration has dropped to its lowest in decades, 400,000 a year. and 15 years ago, the figure was 1.6 million. trump delivered a whopper when he spoke about getting you have to on the families of terrorists and mentioned 9/11. >> when you have the world trade center go, people were put into planes that were friends, families, girlfriends, and they were put into planes and sent back for the most part to saudi arabia, they knew what was going on, and they went home and wanted to watch their boyfriends on television. >> reporter: but the comprehensive september 11th

investigation found that the hijackers had largely cut off contact with their families and did not have their families in the united states. one of the biggest clashes involved rand paul and marco rubio. paul hit rubio hard in his support a few years ago for reform. >> he's the one for the open border that's leaving us defenseless. >> reporter: but the bill that rubio helped write included $40 billion to strengthen security. illegally. >> it is not accurate. he just said that i supported legalization, and indeed, i led the fight against his legalization and amnesty bill. >> reporter: on that, cruz was correct, and rubio was wrong. attacked president obama.

carly fiorina accused the white house of not reaching out to internet companies for threats. >> they need to be asked to bring the best and brightest, the most recent technology to the table. >> reporter: in fact, google and microsoft among others have been asked by the administration and have repeatedly resisted. ted cruz hit the administration this way. >> what the obama administration keeps getting wrong. whennition bad happens, they focus on law-abiding citizens instead of focusing on the bad guys. >> but that's not true. after the attack on san bernardino, president obama spoke to the nation and focused mostly on the bad guys. >> in iraq and syria, airstrikes are taking out heavy weapons and oil tankers. >> reporter: the biggest gaff of the night may have come from chris christie, when he pledged to get u.s. allies more engaged. >> when i stand across from

king of jordan, with this fight, he'll change his mind. >> actually, the king hussein died 16 years, and his son is king abdullah. 20 inaccurate claims. david schuster, aljazeera. >> a rue, but this one with no dancing girls or pop it stars on the program. there were encounters that were angrier and sharper than earlier forms. we have a jar and my guess is that they have to put a dollar in every time a candidate did what he said he had to do last night. joining me, professor of political science, and political strategist and founder of purple strategies, and democratic strategist and

ceo of impact strategies. so genie, does the shape of the republican field become more clear after last night? >> i don't think so. i think that the debate is not going to change of, and hopefully, i say this hopefully, it would whittle down the field. and we would see a narrowing of candidates, and have a robust debate on the issues, but that's not going to happen much before iowa at this point. we may lose one or two along the way, but you still see a big field and a very diverse republican party with a lot of different views on the table. one of the best things about the debate last night, we did start to get offensive, what the differences are among the candidates, in particularly, ted cruz and marco rubio and rand paul were going to the substance of the key policy issues, whether it was immigration or metadata.

and i would like to see more of that, and less of the kind of rhetoric about all of things that we're going to do, and complaints about the obama administration. perfunctory, and more about the substance of the policy, and i think that we started to see that last night to the credit of some of the candidates on the stage, and i will stress some of them, because some of all. >> are these sessions changing how you run? >> i think that the debates have become the centerpiece of the cam pape, no question about it. the proposals that they're putting out, the discussion in conversation. the debate is not two hours oughtlings anymore. it's a couple of days before the setup. you said, i want to put a dollar in the jar, blue who has to do what to be successful? and the analysts, analyzing it now, who did what, and are any

candidates going to drop out? a debate consumes almost a week in the life of a campaign. you plan and prep for it and invest in it, and it's changing the runoff, and it's a much more dominate thing now than the things that used to shape things like television advertisement. >> so, angela, if that's the case, what does it force individual candidates to do? are they going in there primed to get off of a particular line, something that they game planned and rehearsed? or does it untensionally reveal things about them, because they're so long, two hours plus, where they end up having moments that show more than they want to about what they believe? >> i think that the first point is right. i think that it's incumbent on them now to get a zinger in.

jeb bush, who i think fumbled his opening statement yesterday, he said that donald trump was the king of one liners, and he called him the chaos candidate involved in a chaos prez. it was a one-liner and they need to get something out. because robust policy discussions get backed down. we saw this too. there was a very robust policy discussion, where you saw a clear delineration of policies from marco rubio to ped ted cruz to rand paul and what happens? chris christie comes in like clockwork, and says, well, if your eyes are glazed over like mine, making puns about what happens on the senate floor, going right over the heads of the american people. if you're not doing one-liners, you're not having a real debate that? >> isn't that interesting in and of itself?

here, they were getting into pretty fine grained conversation, but as angela notes, it was probably going over the heads of a lot of people in the room, and that's not what they came for. >> no, and a lot of them came from what they heard from donald trump. it was simple statements about what i'm for. cruz and rubio did well, explaining the incident sees around their solution, and the way they conducted themselves and immigration and the nsa issue. and trump simply says, this is what i'm for, and this is why i'm for it, and this is what we're going to do 23 president, and it differentiates himself. and it does change, but stylistically, it's such a strong differentiation. and it's part of the reason that he has been able to stakeout a place in this race and hold that place and those voters, and he continues to not fade as everyone once predicted. >> stay with me.

much of the back and forth last night had overarching themes, and the detailed nitty gritty of national security policy. a hotel casino operator, and a corporate chief may get a higher level of scrutiny on this, rather than their senatorial, making war and peace and paying for it. how do they do? it's the "inside story".

>> this is a tough business, to run for president. >> you're a tough guy, jeb. >> we have to have a leader that's tough. you're never going to be the president of the united states by insulting your way.

>> you're watching "inside story", and i'm ray suarez. a moment of open contempt last night. the san bernardino attack coming weeks before the debate teed up. security and surveillance, preventing attacks from islamic extremists and fighting isil. run for president, do you tell the voters and the energetic crowd what they want to here? or what they need to hear? after weeks on the stage, is there a risk of losing the point and winning the audience? professor genie and bruce are still with me. and last night, when they asked ben carson, if he was prepared to kill a lot of innocent people in prosecuting a war in the middle east, he answered with a parable about brain surgerysurgery seemed like a ba. >> i think it was a terrible idea. i think that you're being nice. it was confusing and hard to

follow, and it didn't seem relevant. initially, i thought that he was trying to say that compassion would lead him not to bomb innocent people. and then he came back, and he was trying to get a clarifying question in, and he said sometimes you have to do what you have to do. and it was very very confuse, and i would say that i would not be being truthful if i said that was the only moment that ben carson had of the night. i think that sometimes apparently neuro surgeons can not be brainiacs. >> chris christie sounded pretty prepared to shoot down russian jets over syria as well. >> absolutely, chris christie came out and did what he needed to do, and i'm going to put a dollar in the jar there. yes, i'll put that in, because chris christie came out and what he needs to do and what he did, there's two dollars for you u. he needs to say that he

has been involved in the war on terror, and he was a run strick pony last night. that's all he said over and over and over again. even when the issue of bridgegate was raised by rand paul, he came back to his credentials as a foreigner prosecutor. and whether you think that's valid or not, he's determined to make the case, but he's the one person on the stage who has been actively involved on the war on terror, and who has prosecuted potential terrorists and lived through 9/11 if you will, arguably across the river, and this is what chris christie is selling, and most importantly in new hampshire, where he's making his case, because if chris christie doesn't perform in new hampshire, he has nowhere else to go, and he knows that, so he's really banking on new hampshire, and you can see that throughout the debate. and i should say that chris christie throughout all of debate has done a fairly good

job, and yet at every turn, you look at the polls, and he has been fairly low number wise. it has not translated number wise, maybe a little bit statewide in new hampshire, but not nationwide. >> bruce, have the san bernardino attacks put 9/11 back in chris christie's hands in a way that perhaps absent that, might have looked weird 15 years off? >> i think so, but the question is, i'm not sure about its enough for chris christie to do what he needs to do. i think that he needs to do more than what he's expected to do. he said things that we expected him to say, but at this point in the race where he's polling, he has to break through the ceiling now. this is forming it itself into a three candidate race between donald trump, who is kind of a candidate of the working class, and ted cruz, the candidate of the id loll class of republicans, and marco rubio,

the candidate of the managerial class, the white collar republicans. it's hard, but as you move to south carolina, chris christie has to displace one of these candidates. ideally as a republican, it might be a good idea for him to displace donald trump. but he didn't do enough to get into that. >> when we come back, i want to talk about where everyone's position, both for the thick of the primary season and the campaign for an eventual democratic candidate. these work well with republican voters, but where the country is on a variety of issues. just about every utterance that's recorded and packaged and zipped around the web. can you really change direction that easily? a las vegas review, it's "inside story".

>> would you be prepared to shoot down that russian plane and risk war with russia? >> not only would i be prepared to do it, i would do it. a no-fly zone means a no-fly zones. that's what it means. i wouldn't talk to vladimir putin. i would talk to him a lot. listen, mr. president, there's a no-fly zone in syria, it applies to you, and we would shoot down russian pilots if they were stupid enough to think that this president is the same weakling as the now. >> welcome back to "inside story," i'm ray suarez, as i was watching the nine candidates onstage last night trying to get the best of each other, i was wondering if that exercise based on real need for short-term advantage might not look so good in a democratic attack add next summer.

it ingratiate a candidate to the 25% of the population that identifies as a republican. not exactly what you plan to say to the other 75% of voters, independents and democrats. given the issues of polling, is that a particular challenge for republicans? angry and bruce are with me. and bruce, you run these campaign and your advice is paid for, and what do you think? >> i think that it's always a challenge, on the other side of the aisle. and it might be a bigger challenge for my party this time, unfortunately, but that's the line you want to run. you've got to run the primary, but winning the primary is useless if your position for the general election, if you become as mitt romney once said, too severely conservative, how are you appeal to conservatives and crossover democrats? you don't want to leyland mines

in the primary that you as a candidate have to step on and navigate yourself for in the general election. >> last night, we got more surveillance, more bombing, more militarized state. and i don't know how you walk away from that next summer and say, i didn't say that. >> . >> it's going to be difficult. but keep in mind, that as we see more things like san bernardino potentially happen, this is where the lectorate is moving quickly. there's a hierarchy of values. there's community and family and then there's security. the things that you care about when things are safe, are one thing, but when the bad guy is knocking on your door and you feel threatened and you are wondering, i would like to go to the mall and buy my kid a christmas present, i wonder if i'm going to get shot there, it makes people gravitate to certain security measures that they wouldn't ordinarily, and this is what the conversation

was last night at this debate. >> you no longer have to package and buy national ad time, you can do hyper started video pieces over the web. are we providing the campaigns for a lot of fodder next year in the debates? >> we certainly are. and this is the new terrain. and as bruce knows full well, these are the things. every election cycle it seems, there's a use of new technology that campaigns have to catch up with. and some of this may be unexpected in terms of what is going to happen in the general election. for instance, all of the tweeting going on. how did that play when it put into a campaign ad in the general election? just to give an example, marco rubio has potentially put himself in a bind on this issue of abortion, where he has come out in this completely, you know, kind of

-- i think absolutist way where he has no exceptions for the life of a woman, no exceptions in any case. those things are very very hard to overcome when you get into a general election, but i think that bruce is absolutely right. it plays on both sides. as much as hilliary clinton has moved to the left, which is not as the republican side has moved to the right, she has to answer for some of that in the general election. but the new technology in the issue. >> to close this out, is it organized? is it problematic? are there democratic campaign operatives sitting and taking notes on what to use? >> i hope so. i'm saying that because we have, collectively as america in this country, have moved to the left. but there's a part of the republican party, which is outnumbered at this point, that has moved more to the right.

and as you just said, i think that the issue s. mitt romney in 2012 was in trouble for binders full of women, and 47% of people. when you think about what those two soundbites were, compared to all of the crap because that's what it is, we have received from this republican plate of candidates, it's completely different and a lot ballgame, and i think that they're in a lot of trouble come the general. >> i want to thank my guests. angela, bruce, and jeannie, great to see you all again. and i'll be back in a moment with a final thought on what i watched last night and what i saw. stay with us. it's "inside story". and send us your thoughts on twitter and aj "inside story" a.m., or follow me and get in touch at ray suarez news. or visit our facebook page and

tell us what you think of the republican slate of candidates in the wake of last night's debate. we would love to hear from you.

>> when someone is beating you in an election, it probably makes sense to try to figure out why. donald trump, even with his sagging support in iowa and the surge of ted cruz, is miles ahead of the republican field nationwide among self identified republican voters. last night, as senators cruz and rubio dug into the minutia of military funding and immigration reform, trump was either absent or simply defaulting back to his stump go toes. building a great wall between us and mexico and killing families of isil fighters, and when asked about specifics on isil, turning geo political matters into a hr question. he's going to hire good people. thumping trump up onstage may

alienate his voters, and all of other candidates need and the those voters. so instead of trying to tear him down, they nibble around the edges, trying to be the trump who is not trump, making is. last night, chris christie stumbled on what could be a risky move, shooting down russian military jets that violated a theoretical no-fly zone over syria. sounding tough takes first place, instead of the fear of retaliating against one of the few militaries in the world unable to unleash destruction in one place on earth more than once. and shooting down jets may not be the wrong answer, but the problem is it's the too easy answer, and thus the most satisfying one. i'm ray suarez, and that's the

protests in baltimore after a jury fails to reach a verdict in the case i've policeman charged over the death of freddy gray. ♪ ♪ coming up on the next half hour, the united states raises interest rates for the first time in a decade. we'll be looking at the possible global repercussions. yemen's ceasefire is in danger of collapse with fighters from both sides accusing each other of violating the truce. and china opposes a $1.8 billion arms deal between the u.s. and